Acupractitioner21 is the sequel to the underground hit Acustudent21, from one of the periods when I was training in Chinese medicine. This blog will focus on Classical Chinese Medicine, CCM, the old system, and on what it´s like to practice acupuncture in the West in the 21st century. The name might have changed, but like everybody in old Chinese medicine, I am still a student.

lördag 10 januari 2015

Healing our shen and health through how we phrase ourselves – Right Speech: how you heal yourself and others through taking responsibility for what you say

Healing is the focus of the
acupuncture in Chinese medicine. A skilled acupuncturist will help
with this – showing the patient a direction for healing and
freedom. You treat both what is called bransch – biao –
what we call symptoms in the West, but always also ben, root,
which is the underlying cause of the symptoms we might only see in
the branches and leaves of our system. At the same time, there are
several other facets which are important if we actually want to
change our health in the long run: they are found in how we live our
life.

If
we expect to get better and heal without changing anything in our old
life, the improvement to our health is often temporary. Soon it risks
falling back into the old patterns that we could have let go, the
ones that made our health worse to begin with.

One
of the simplest places to begin when it comes to our health, is how
we phrase ourselves. In this article, we will look at the huge effect
negative ways of phrasing can have on us and others – and how we
can change this to become a positive, nourishing factor that
strengthens our health and makes people in our surroundings happier
and more whole. Welcome in.

”Compassion
is a verb.”

-
Zen monk and peace activist Thich Nhat Hahn

Our
mind is visible in what we say

In
the West, many different systems aiming at stress management have
tried to cut fragments out of the old traditions from the East. But
in the old traditions there is a huge amoung of knowledge rarely seen
here at all. One of the simplest yet most important views in them is
to look at how one´s own mind works. This is the root for
everything.

But
to many in the West, beginning there is too advanced. An easier way
is often to begin listening to what one says. Our mind is visible in
the words we choose; our heart is visible in the intent we use when
talking to other people.

Many
people in our society phrase themself in quite negative ways. It has
become a habit, often taught by someone else – parents, school,
partner, media, workmates – and it´s a habit that hurts so much
more than we think. It hurts both ourselves and the person we are
talking to when we do it.

Negativ
intent and energy which is carried out into our life through our
voice colours our surroundings with that negativity. Before that, it
has of course already made our own system inside much more negative
too. It might have made our internal life negative inside for years
before that, maybe decades; it´s something like decorating a house
with armchairs and sofas wrapped in barbed wire.

”No-one has ever raised a statue
to a critic.”

– Mark
Twain

Influence
from the media

Media
surrounds us. For those who listen a lot to TV and radio, that
negativity can become so taken for granted that it becomes a
background noise to our life, like always bringing with us a bitter
and negative person who constantly is whispering next to us.

That
negativity – and the pictures our mind links to it – will
eventually shape how we think and how we see reality. This means that
it can also shape our very view of reality: the world is so full of
problems and pain that all of it just going to hell in a handbasket
and nothing will ever get better...

If
you look more analytically and critically at what is said, and if you
actually do real research on it, you will discover that these
negative views often are wrong, and that the world is more full of
good projects, good people and light than we ever hear about.

The
programming from the media and from capitalism has even managed to
begin change how we see what is positive for us. Because of the
programming from corporations, many people now believe that it heals
them to buy new clothes or toys, which is just another way of trying
to fill the emptiness inside that corporations try to create in us.

If
people nourish themselves and are well, and just safely rest in who
they are, they loose a lot of the interest to buy things. If this
attitude spread through society, corporations would also make much
less money. So there is always a motivation for them to manipulate us
to make us feel positive only
when we buy things, and that that ”we deserve to feel good”
equals buying something instead of simply just feeling good and being
content in our life.

When
we see our world in a brighter light, our internal world also becomes
more full of light. In Chinese medicine, one talks about several
different diagnostic patterns using similes like internal weather. It
becomes simple: the question if we want to live with an internal
world which is like a wet November day, or if we want to live with an
internal world which is like one of those early summer days, full of
sunshine and lightness, just on that brink between spring and summer.
Which kind of weather do you want inside you?

”To
belittle you
have to be little.”

– Khalil
Gibran

Negativity
in our society, and the crab bucket

Media
is part of how negatively our society sees things – but sadly there
is also what one often calls ”the crab bucket”.

If
you put crabs in a bucket, and one tries to climb out, to freedom
again, the others will stretch out their claws and try to pull it
back down.

The
crab bucket is quite common in many people´s life, and many
automatically think like this because they have been programmed to
think like this by parents, teachers, acquaintances or workmates.

Thankfully,
it is possible to be free of the crab bucket and change it in others.
The choice is entirely up to you; we must all make the choice ourself
if we want to be a positive factor for ourselves and our
surroundings.

”Never
look down on anybody
unless you´re
are helping them up.”

– Jesse
Jackson

Right
Speech – how we heal ourself and others through choosing our words

Sometime
you can hear them as you walk by, when you sit nearby; people who
gossip about others, who try to take them down, attack them, paint
them a certain colour and then try to use this as a power over them.
Whispers, negative voices sharing rumours like presents of rotten
meat. You can see it on those who often do it, it´s visible in their
faces. Whispers in the winter´s night, on the phone or online. The
sad way some people choose to fill the emptiness in their own life.

The
opposite of gossip is often called Right Speech in Buddhism,
and similar principles exist in most spiritual traditions. With Right
Speech, we take an increasing amount of responsibility for how we
manifest our own energy and intent in what we say and in how we use
our voice.

With
Right Speech, you slowly learn to become more and more conscious of
how you phrase yourself, and if it is negative,
neutral,
or positive.
Both in what you say about yourself and about others.

The
more we do this, the more we see how our mind works and can begin to
change it – a practical way of letting more sunlight and warmth
light up in us!

Most
spiritual traditions have versions of the techniques in Right Speech.
What it really concerns is to begin being more present in how our
mind shapes our thoughts.

How
do we sound? How much of what I say is negative? How much of what I
say are rumours or gossip? How much of what I say is charged with
negative intent towards others?

The
more you think this through, the more you realize how much we can
choose to heal ourselves through how we use our voice.

The
more we remember to be kinder and nicer, the more we also notice how
that positive effect clearly spreads around us. More and more it
begins to lighten and light us up inside; it becomes easier around
the heart, freer in the chest, the mind becomes happier and the way
we look at ourselves and others becomes more full of compassion.

Right
Speech means that we more and more simply stand for what we do and

who we are. In English, one version for this is walking the talk:
standing for what

you say.

One
of our teachers, the acupuncture doctor and daoist lineage holder
Jeffrey Yuen, talks about it like this: ”In Daoism, we have what is
called qingren: the Clear People or People with Clarity. We often say
that they are like a drop of ink in water – unnoticeably they
spread balance and compassion around them until it saturates the
water where they are, the people around them.”

”COURAGE
– give others more than they need and do it gladly.”

– poster
in the clinics of Small Change Classical Chinese Medicine and
Acupuncture

How
do you phrase yourself?

What
do you say about your own health? What can you hear in your words
about yourself? If you are saying a negative image then it is quite
likely that a part of your mind actually thinks that might be true
too. If you start to rephrase yourself a bit more positively –
taking a first step on that road – then you also begin changing
your internal world to have more sunlight and more flowers inside.

”I
am so bad at doing things.”

”I
am not worth feeling well.”

”I
am such a negative factor for people in my surroundings.”

...etc.
All just programmings, negative programmings we have had in us like
computer viruses.

Shall
we take a look at them again?

”I
am so bad at doing things.”

Have
you never done anything good at all? Have you never done something
that made another human being happier and lighter, even if just a
little? If you want to, you can keep doing good things and just
practice how you can make them even better for yourself and for
others.

”I
am not worth feeling well.”

Why
wouldn´t you be? Everybody is worth feeling well in their life and
becoming more compassionate. If someone told you this a long time
ago, they probably just spread the programming they had inside
themselves. That they spread this says much more about them and the
dark, unpleasant internal world they sadly live with twentyfour hours
a day.

It
is exactly in things like this we can see how incredibly far negative
speech can spread – it can spread like weeds through generations.
Instead of this, we can chose to phrase ourselves more carefully and
more positively, and let this become positive rings on the water.
Kind and positive phrasing to someone can become a seed that
strengthens them over their entire lifetime.

”I
am such a negative factor for people in my surroundings.”

We
are never only a negative factor in our surroundings. We can choose
if we want to become more positive, if we want to spread positive
rings on the water arround us or spread negativity where we go. The
first step is often to simply start noticing what we say and how we
say it. Slowly we become more neutral instead of negative. With more
time and training, we become more positive for ourselves and for the
people around us.

If
someone says negative things about you or someone else, one way of
solving this is to pleasantly ask, ”Exactly
how do you know that?”.
Few people who spread rumours dare stand for their opinion, because
they know it´s empty. It is the same thing with facts; facts take a
long time to learn, which is why so many rather have opinions, as
opinions are fast to get and weigh nothing.

Another
way of gently dissolving negative comments from others is to
pleasantly ask, ”What
makes you think that?..”
Always try to be curteous if you can, the best situation is if you
can help them open up their heart a little at the same time. We can´t
always do that, but if we can, that kind of discussion has the
greatest healing-effect in the long run.

The
more you work with Right Speech, the more careful and cautious you
become with what you say. The clearer and more whole one becomes, and
the freer one´s own life gets, filled with compassion and warmth.

“Indifference and neglect often
do much more damage than outright dislike.”

– J.
K. Rowling, Harry
Potter and
the Order of the Phoenix

Practical
advice for phrasing

Think
through what you have done every day. Give yourself praise for good
things, even if you think they seem small. This slowly changes how
our mind works and how we see ourself and the world. If we have been
programmed for years or decades to be negative, eventually parts of
our mind might begin to think so too, even though it´s incorrect. We
only have to start changing those negative programmings and keep
changing them, and things get better. Like they say in China, one
step at a time and you get there.

People
who gossip about others and are negative near you, do they seem to
feel well? Do they seem happy about who they are? Do they seem
compassionate towards others, and a positive factor in their life? It
is when we really start to look at others that we see how damaging
their negativity really is, both to themselves and to others.

If
someone is negative near you or towards you, see if you can let that
go and stay with them. It is part of how their internal world is, and
it is great pity if they live in the middle of a rainy, cold to the
bone November day their whole life without an umbrella. We can let
those problems stay with them, and keep sunlight in our own internal
world.

In
best case, we can help them become better too, but the only thing we
can do for certain is to be improve our own skills in Right Speech.

Look
at how you phrase yourself. Are you using negative phrases and words
about yourself? Are you negative towards others? Try then to just
gently rephrase what you say to something nicer, kinder, nourishing
or positive. Every second in our life we can choose whether we want
to live it as a positive factor for ourselves and our surroundings.
The choice is entirely up to us: after that, we only take one more
step at a time on that path, and become more and more skilled at
Right Speech, and more and more healed and whole and compassionate
inside.